OSWALD BROWN Writes...

My column last week on the government's decision to drastically cut funding for the National Youth Service Program generated a great deal of response, including a call from Minister of Youth Desmond Bannister, who assured me that the government has no intention of eventually eliminating the program.

Apparently the decision to relocate the program from North Andros to New Provi-dence, a move which I considered to be ill-advised, was based on a report prepared by a team headed by Sterling Gardiner of the School Ps-ychological Services Unit that was presented to the Government in November of 2008.

Gardiner has the impressive credentials of BS, MA, CHRM behind his name and is also described as a PhD candidate. Likewise, the members of his team are similarly academically well credentialed. They included: Antoinette Lewis, BA, MS, PhD candidate; Rhoda Bain, BA, MS, MCC; Philippa Shaw, BA; and Nikita Moss, BA.

What all this suggests is that the findings of the Gardiner Team had to be taken seriously by the government, and the evaluation process that was used likewise suggests that their research was thorough.

Here is what is noted in the report as the team's "term of reference" for evaluations: "Using a Trans-disciplinary Research (TdR) method, the team profiled boys' academic, intelligence, skills and interests profile (career choices), trauma response (anger levels, depressive responses etc.), adaptive skills and using a structured interview process, gauge self-perception within the camp's community. In addition, based on recommendation presented from the Camp's February 2008 program evaluation report, observations were made to determine compliance with recommendations for staff improvements and skills set up-grade. The above exercise was expected to provide the Team with foundational knowledge of participants' psycho-eductional states and how it may relate to stated objectives of The Bahamas Government expectations for its National Youth correctional program."

Despite the standard pedantic tenor that's typical of "scholarly reports," overall some aspects of the report's findings could not be ignored by the government in determining the way forward for the program, which is an offshoot of the highly successful Youth Empowerment and Skills Training Institute (YEAST) program introduced in The Bahamas by the Roman Catholic Diocese in September of 1997.

Operating out of the former Hardecker Clinic on the grounds of Our Lady's Church on Deveaux Street in New Providence, YEAST was designed exclusively for at-risk young men between the ages of 16 and 19 years who "seek to develop positive attitudes and acquire skills in carpentry, masonry, auto mechanics, plumbing and electrical installation."

The YEAST program proved to be highly successful, and in September of 2004, the former Progressive Liberal Party Government sought to replicate that success on a broader scale in addressing the problems being faced by young men in our society by implementing the restorative component of YEAST at the old Government Agricultural Sta-tion in North Andros.

In the 2008/2009 budget, the Government provided $900,000 for the program, but in the current 2009/2010 budget funding was slashed by $555,000, representing a 62 percent cut, despite the program's reported 80 percent success rate. It is this fact that prompted my conclusion in last week's column that the government had "made a big mistake by drastically reducing funding" for the program.

Based on the "findings" of the Gardiner Team report, however, the government's decision to close the camp in North Andros appears to have been the right thing to do.

The report's findings "de-termined that educational and mental health services delivery apparatus at the youth camp remained in the same underdeveloped state with untrained staff as was the case in February 2008."

Among other things, it also reached these conclusions:

* "Current observations (October 2008) indicated that the National Youth Services Camp on North Andros' staff still operate a classic 'boot camp' style of delinquent intervention, where the para-military structure become dominant and the educational, mental health and after-care have become unstructured and dysfunctional."

* "Contrary to recommendation presented in Program Evaluation February 2008, current Educational component reviews revealed no properly structured curriculum documents or lesson planning procedures were produced, classroom activities still consisted of patch-worked subjects offering and five teachers (three subject teachers and two subject trainers) are still without sufficient background training, experience or certification as subject teachers."

These two conclusions tend to negate the core reasons for optimism that the program would have the kind of lasting impact on the at-risk youth whose lives it is seeking to redirect in a more positive direction. Certainly, instilling the kind of discipline that the operation of a "classic boot camp" may achieve could be an asset, but this has to be done in tandem with educational, cultural and anger-management programs aimed at addressing the anti-social behaviour that nurtured their tendencies to be menaces to society.

One of the arguments that I have used in support of my criticism of the government's decision to move the program from North Andros to New Providence is that this would be disregarding possibly the main reasons why the program was largely considered to be successful; that reason being that the at-risk youngsters that the program targeted for help had been removed from the contaminating influences and environment that led to them going astray in the first place.

However, the Gardner Team report, in my view, made a good case in support of the decision to move the program out of North Andros. But in doing so, if the government is sincere about restructuring the National Youth Development Program to encompass "all aspects of youth development" – as Youth Minister Bannister promised during his contribution to the recent budget debate in the House of Assembly – it will include in that restructuring a strong component to do precisely what the North Andros program was designed to do.

Minister Bannister clearly has an all-encompassing program in mind based on this statement that he made in the House: "The current program, which is dubbed a National Youth Program, is a restorative program only. It is designed for boys who have already become menaces to society, but is not designed to reach those who we need to reach most – the young men and women in our society who can be helped before they get into trouble so that they can lead productive lives and not become menaces to society."

This most certainly is a laudable objective, but there are already a whole lot of young men – and increasingly so, young women – who are already menaces to society and some who are on the brink of joining this wayward group. This being the case, the fact the National Youth Program will no longer be located in North Andros should not result in a reduced commitment to putting the lives of these troubled youths on the right road toward productive lives as law-abiding citizens.

Oswald T. Brown is managing editor of The Freeport News. You can contact him via e-mail at oswald@nasguard .com.